This image released by Hulu shows Jeff Daniels in a scene from "The Looming Tower." a 10-part series chronicling events leading to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Daniels is set to star in a new stage version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Broadway. (JoJo Whilden/Hulu via AP)

Harper Lee's longtime attorney on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court in south Alabama on behalf of Lee's estate over a planned Broadway version of "To Kill A Mockingbird."

Tonja Carter filed the suit against Rudinplay, Inc., saying the New York production company in 2015 signed an agreement with Lee, paying Lee $100,000 for the rights to produce the play and giving Lee the right to select the playwright and review the script.

Lee approved producer Scott Rudin's selection of Aaron Sorkin as the playwright that year, the complaint filed by Carter states. Lee died in 2016.

In 2017, Sorkin, the complaint states, told Vulture the play "is a different take on Mockingbird" that shows Atticus Finch, to be played by Jeff Daniels, going through an emotional journey from "apologist" for his racist neighbors to becoming by the play's end the venerable attorney known to generations of readers.

"Audiences won't encounter the morally sound Atticus Finch they know" at the beginning of the play, Sorkin also told Playbill in 2017.

Andrew Nurnberg, literary agent to Lee's estate, in September 2017 expressed his concerns to Rudin that any change to the characters must "not contradict the author's image of them," the filing states.

Rudin tried to ease the concerns of Nurnberg and Carter, the filing states, which included Carter's worries about plans to add new characters not created by Lee.

Carter and Rudin met on Feb. 16, the suit states, and "at times the conversation was heated."

Carter wrote to Rudin on March 5, saying the script alters the book's core characters and "the spirit of the novel."

"The Rudin team is arguing it does not, and that, while the producers must listen to the estate's view, they are the final arbiters of whether the production is faithful to the novel," The New York Times reported today.

That report continued:

"I can't and won't present a play that feels like it was written in the year the book was written in terms of its racial politics: It wouldn't be of interest," Mr. Rudin said in an interview. "The world has changed since then."